Jerry Lewis, the legendary American comedian, once made a film so controversial it was never seen by the public.
"The Day the Clown Cried," shot in 1972, tells the story of a circus clown who leads children to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp.
The film's plot alone is enough to raise eyebrowsbut its troubled production history and subsequent disappearance —the film has never been released to the public and legal issues ensure it likely never will be — have elevated it to near-mythical status among film buffs.
"If you just tell people: Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in a drama about a clown in a concentration camp leading children into the gas chambers, people say: 'What? How have I never heard of this movie, how have I never seen it?'" saysShawn Levy, author of "King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis."
A new documentary, "From Darkness to Light," exploresthe making of "The Day the Clown Cried" and Lewis' complicated relationship with it. The documentarywillscreen at this year's Venice Film Festival. While it won't show the full film, it promises never-before-seen footage of the movie, providinga glimpse into this enduring Hollywood mystery.
The 'Nutty Professor'tries to get serious
Lewis, who died in 2017aged 91, was a showbiz legend who wasbest known forslapstick comedies like "Cinderfella" and "The Nutty Professor."
In the early 1970s, with his career on the skids,he made a bid to be taken more seriously.
He was offered the starring role in "The Day the Clown Cried,"based on a script by publicist-turned-TV producer, Joan O’Brien, and Charles Denton, then a TV critic withtheLos AngelesExaminer.
The story followsaGerman circus performer in the 1940s who gets sent to a concentration campfor drunkenlymocking Hitler onstage.
Once there, he is tasked with entertaining Jewish children to distract them as they are being led to the gas chambers. In the movie's final act, the clown chooses to join the children inside the gas chamber and die with them. It's a comedy. Supposedly.
Something in the story apparently appealed to Lewis,who was Jewish, since hethrew himself into the work.
He touredDachau and Auschwitz for researchand went on a grapefruit diet to shed 35 pounds (16 kg) to look more gaunt for the role.
He also rewrote the script to make it better fit his slapstick style, addingjokes and pratfalls and changing the protagonist's name from the more generic Karl Schmidt to ... Helmut Doork. Get it?
Production problems and legal hassles
The production of "The Day the Clown Cried" was plagued from the start by legal issues.
Nathan Wachsberger,the producer who had hired Lewis, did not have the rights to make the movie. He only had an option to adapt theO'Brien/Denton script — an option thathad expired by the time Lewis arrived in Europe to start shooting.
Lewis went ahead anyway, investing, by his own account,$2 million (€1.8 million) of his own money to finish the film.
He shot the movie in Paris and Swedenbut money was tight. When the production wrapped, theSwedish studio, claiming it was owed $600,000, held back some of the footage and the original negatives.
Undeterred, Lewis headed back to the States with his firstrough cut of the film. He screened it for Joan O'Brien, who, as the original author, had final say in whether the movie could be released. It did not go well.
"She left the screening room in tears," recalls Shawn Levy, "saying, 'This will never see the light of day, I will never give you the rights.' When she passed, she put it in her will: This film can never be shown."
"From Darkness to Light,"which screens in the Venice Film Festival's Venice Classics section, will explore themaking of the filmand Lewis' complicated, decadeslong relation to it.
Co-directed by acclaimed German documentarian Eric Friedler and American Michael Lurie, the movie featuresseveral minutes oforiginal material from Lewis' film, as well as one of the last interviews Lewis gave on the movie before he died.
Lost masterpiece or complete disaster?
Only a handful of people claim to have seen Lewis' rough cut of "The Day the Clown Cried" and reactions have been mixed.
The French film criticJean-Michel Frodonsaid he saw a cut in the early 2000s and he admired it.
American comedian Harry Shearer, who voices several characters on"The Simpsons,"includingMr. Burns andNed Flanders, says he was able to watch the film on a "three-quarter-inch tape" in 1979.In an interview with Spy magazine, Shearer described the experience aswatching "a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz."
Lewis himself gave mixed signals about the filmthroughout his life. "This picture must be seen," he wrote in his1982 autobiography. In2013, at a question-and-answer session at the Cannes Film Festival, he told an audience at Cannes that, "no one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work ...It was bad, bad, bad. I slipped up."
"I've seen a lot of the original footage, and there were a lot of scenes I thought were great, and there were scenes that were bad, badly shot, where [Lewis] was bad, others where he was really good," said Friedler, speaking in 2016 after the premiere of "Der Clown,"an earlier documentary on the making of "The Day the Clown Cried."
"I think he got lost ... maybe if he had more time he could have found a way to make a tragedy, or tragic-comedy, from the material," said Friedler.
He suggests that"The Day the Clown Cried" could have made the Holocaust comedy work nearly 30 years before Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning"Life is Beautiful" (1997). But Friedler concludesthat Lewis "never got the chance."
Why the public still can't see 'The Day the Clown Cried'
In 2015, two years before he died, Lewis donated his personal archive, including materials from "The Day the Clown Cried,"to the Library of Congress.
However, the donation came with a stipulation that the footage could not be shown for at least 10 years.
Fans expecting a release next year will be disappointed. The library has confirmed they have only partial negatives of the movie, around 90 minutesof unedited camera rushes without sound, as well as some behind-the-scenes footage. Even then, legal restrictions mean the movie cannot becommercially released.
"Even if you couldfind the remaining footage and somehow reassemble it, using AI to do the voices, whatever, you still don't have the rights to charge a penny to see this material because O'Brien's estate stipulates that it will not happen,"says Levy. "It's a historical document, but will never be a commercial film."
There have been several attempts to remake the original O'Brien and Denton script. A new version is supposedly in the works, with plans to shoot in Europe. ButLevy suggests that the mystery surrounding the "lostJerry Lewis Holocaust comedy"may be more valuable than the film itself.
"Even if the film had succeeded, even if it was 'Schindler's List,'even if it was a masterpiece, it would have shrunk over time," Levy says. "The fact that we can never see it means it has never shrunk, and it never will."
Edited by: Stuart Braun and Cristina Burack
